


Making Time for You

by pencilguin



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-13
Updated: 2019-04-13
Packaged: 2020-01-12 22:45:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18456137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pencilguin/pseuds/pencilguin
Summary: In the early days of the Discovery's journey, Hugh and Paul are struggling to find time for each other with their new schedules on the ship. Naturally, Paul ends up doing something stupid.





	Making Time for You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nerdqueenenterprise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerdqueenenterprise/gifts).



> Written for a prompt from @nerdqueenenterprise!  
> Disclaimer: Apparently I don't know anything about technology, please bear with me. Also this is unbeta'd, so I apologize for any mistakes that are still in there. 
> 
> Content warning: physical injury, blood, probably unhealthy eating habits.

_Hey, love! Sorry, I’m afraid I can’t make it to dinner today. Another emergency has come up, we thought the patient was stable but he’s unexpectedly gotten worse. I’m afraid I’ll be in here for a few more hours with the way things are looking right now. Please don’t wait for me, you’ve gotta get up early in the morning. I’m so sorry, Paul. I love you._

Paul read over the message one more time and bit his lip.

_Again._

He tried not to be angry. It didn’t work.

It was probably his own fault for expecting too much, now that they were finally living together, even if it was on a Starfleet ship in the middle of a war. He had hoped that now they would finally be able to spend more time together, to see each other more often. But after the first couple of weeks their shifts had been a disaster. Somehow whoever was responsible for the scheduling had managed to align them in the worst way possible so they barely ever saw each other at all, despite sharing their quarters. And between picking up refugees on their various rescue missions, who more often than not needed immediate medical treatment, and Lorca pushing for more and more test jumps each day, even managing their scheduled free time windows had become more and more challenging. Tonight had been the first time in nine days that they had been able to cram a shared meal break into their overstuffed schedules. And Hugh had just canceled it. Paul wasn’t looking forward to another dinner alone in the mess hall and then sitting around in their quarters by himself until it was time for him to go to bed because Hugh wouldn’t be home for several more hours. Never mind that Paul had already extended his own shift so he’d be getting his dinner late enough to match up with Hugh’s very early lunch break (and because his work wasn’t going to do itself, even though Lorca seemed to believe that). Between their capricious captain and the completely useless CMO, they had given up trying to request shift adjustments and had resorted to waiting for better times and trying to make the best of what they were dealt.

That didn’t mean that Paul wasn’t still disappointed, though. He barely caught himself before snapping at one of the cadets who had asked him a question and simply gave them a curt answer instead, then took a few deep breaths and decided to just call it a day and get his dinner now.

 

***

 

His alarm pulled him out of his dreams in an extremely rude and cruel way and, grumbling, he silenced it before it woke Hugh as well. He must have snuck into bed many hours after Paul had fallen asleep and curled himself around Paul’s back. Being wrapped in Hugh was really comfy and he very much regretted that he had to gently peel his arms off and roll himself out of bed to get ready for the day.

While he was in the bathroom and brushing his teeth, a call for him came in from Commander Saru. He hissed disapprovingly at the computer’s loud voice and ordered it to send the call to his PADD. He didn’t bother to take the sonic toothbrush out of his mouth as he rushed over to pick his PADD up from the table and accept the call.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Stamets,” Saru said pointedly, his face twitching as if he was raising an eyebrow at the sight of Paul, if Kelpiens actually had eyebrows. “Captain Lorca asked me to inform you that another test for your drive has been scheduled for today at 0915 hours.”

Paul rolled his eyes. Why their captain was the one scheduling the test runs for their highly experimental drive that was in no way operable yet and entirely managed by Paul otherwise, he would never understand. He glanced over his shoulder at the bed, where Hugh had stirred, and carried the PADD with him back into the bathroom.

“Understood, Commander,” he responded with a lowered voice. “Although I fail to see the necessity of simply repeating the same routines from yesterday’s jump, or the logic with which the captain expects us to get a different result this time.”

“You are welcome to ask him this question yourself,” Saru simply said. “Have a good day, Mister Stamets.” And with that he ended the call. Paul sighed and put the PADD down.

“No chance for breakfast, then?”

He jumped and pulled the toothbrush out of his mouth as he spun around. Hugh was standing behind him in the doorframe, frowning and not looking very awake.

“Sorry we woke you up.”

“Don’t worry about me. I can go back to sleep as soon as you’ve left.”

He walked up to Paul and kissed him. Paul sighed.

“No breakfast I’m afraid, no. If Lorca wants us to jump by 0915 then I’ve got about five more minutes to get dressed before I have to leave and get everything set up. Maybe I can even still try to apply a fix or two to our jump routine code so the test won’t be a complete waste of spores and energy. And,” he sighed, “no food for me until lunch, I guess. And that’s if I’m lucky.”

Hugh looked like he was about to say something, but then thought better of it and moved on.

“No chance of seeing you later today either, I assume?” Paul asked. It came out harsher than he had intended.

“Unlikely.” Hugh made a face. “I’m so sorry for yesterday, darling. I really didn’t have a choice.” He started running his hands up and down Paul’s arms in an attempt to comfort him.

Paul pulled himself away, put down his toothbrush, and walked past him out of the bathroom to put on his uniform pants and jacket. He avoided looking at Hugh and seeing the hurt expression on his face.

“I have to go now. See you … one day, maybe.”

After he’d pulled on his boots, he walked out of their quarters and took the shortest route to the next turbolift.

Okay. That had been a dick move and he knew it. A fresh hot wave of guilt was already washing over him for walking out on Hugh like that. This wasn’t his fault. He probably hated it just as much as Paul did. Probably even more, because he was blaming himself for canceling their last date.

_Fuck Starfleet. Fuck Lorca._

What Paul really wanted to do right now was to run back and throw himself into Hugh’s arms and never let anyone drag Hugh or himself out of there again. But unfortunately he still took his duty seriously, so he let the turbolift doors close behind him instead and announced his destination to the computer.

 

***

 

To nobody’s surprise, at least most certainly not Paul’s, their test jump failed. Spectacularly. They just _barely_ avoided frying the ship’s main weapons system in the process, which was probably the only reason why Lorca didn’t actually bite Paul’s head off. He sighed loudly and went back to trying to fix the mess that was their current version of the jump protocol.

A bit after noon he got a message from Hugh.

_Hey, honey! How’s your day? How did the test go?_

_Trust me, you don’t wanna know._

_Aw. I’m so sorry, boo._

_How about lunch together, in half an hour?_

_Oh—no, I’m sorry for that, too. I can’t. I just got a call to report back to medbay in 15 mins._

_Okay then …_

_I’m really sorry, Paul._

_Can you at least finish earlier today then?_

_I don’t know, boo. I’ll let you know._

Great. Fantastic. He dropped his PADD back onto his station, a little more careless than was appropriate, probably. He had just started pondering whether to go and eat lunch alone or skip it so he could get more work done when another message popped up, this time on the screen of his workstation. It was from Lorca.

_I hear the Glenn is making good progress with their own latest test jumps. What’s holding us up? I want another test tomorrow morning, same time. Make it count._

Paul felt his blood pressure rising. He closed his eyes, started taking deep breaths, and counted to ten. Then he typed _Yes, sir._ and returned to his work. Lunch would have to wait.

 

***

 

In fact, so did tea, and things weren’t looking great for dinner, either. By now, Paul was feeling a moderate headache, and a slight dizziness. Part of him knew exactly where they were coming from, of course—it was the part that usually sounded like Hugh. He tried to ignore it and focus on his jump simulation. Which kept bringing up error after error. He let himself fall back onto his chair with a frustrated sigh and ran his hands through his hair.

“Sir …?” Cadet Tilly asked nervously.

“It’s not working. I keep getting a critical error in array 0172A that’s not supposed to be there.”

“0172…” She glanced back and forth between the calculations on her own PADD and Paul’s screen a few times until, suddenly, her mouth formed an “O” shape and she looked as if a light bulb had just switched on inside her head. “Sir! I—I think I’ve got it!”

With quick movement of her fingers she typed a few things into her PADD and then flicked the file from its screen over onto Paul’s. He squinted at the data she’d sent and tried to parse what she had highlighted.

“It’s not an error in your code; there seems to be something wrong with the wiring in the reaction cube. The computer can’t interpret the signals it’s getting so it keeps spitting out simulation failures.”

She was right, of course. Now that it had been pointed out, it seemed so obvious. The headache really must be taking its toll on him by now. He also felt his hands slightly shaking. Might be a side effect of the dizziness. Great preconditions for performing precise technical procedures.

“Can we fix this?”

“Yes—yes, sir, I should be able to do that.”

“Then let me help you.”

She nodded, then grabbed a toolkit from under the main drive console and followed him into the chamber. In the middle of the small room, she knelt down and, with swift fingers, opened one of the panels covering the wires to get a closer look. She took a small flashlight out of the toolbox and inspected the strings of thinner and thicker wires running parallel, intertwining, and splitting off into various directions. Not long after, her brows furrowed.

“Hah!” She pointed at one of the wires, tucked a little further in the back. “Got it!”

Paul leaned in closer, still crouched next to her, and inspected the cable spaghetti in front of them.

“That’s it?”

“Yup. Looks well-done, if you ask me.”

She seemed to realize the way in which she’d been talking to her superior officer a second too late and bit her lip. Paul actually found it endearing, how sometimes she seemed to just forget to be scared of him. His mouth briefly twitched into a smile.

“I guess you’re going to replace it?”

“Yes, it’s completely fried. I need to take out the damaged parts …” She started rummaging through the box’s various drawers until she found a roll of wires with the same diameter as the damaged section, and all the parts needed to connect it, then she pulled out a small tool that looked like a scalpel with a white blade.

Paul frowned as she dove in with the scalpel and cleanly cut out the damaged wire.

“Theeere we go … That’s that little troublemaker taken care of.” She pulled out the severed piece and showed it to Paul, who held out his open palms so she could drop it into them.

“That looks bad. We need to figure out what caused this or it’ll just happen again.”

“Am on it,” she said, turning back to the open panel.

“And why are you using a knife for this?”

“It’s better suited for this than a laser cutter. We have to be careful with temperature in this part, and the lasers too easily cut too deep by accident. With the scalpel, I have more control.”

“Interesting,” Paul responded, genuinely impressed. “I didn’t know about that.” She beamed at him, cheeks flushed, then went back to the wires.

“I think … I can see something there in the back …” she squinted, then stuck the scalpel between her teeth so she could dig into the opened panel with her free hand while the other was still holding the flashlight. “It wooks wike a piefe woosened there, way in whe back of whe panel. Do you fee it?”

Paul frowned at her instead.

“I don’t think this is compliant with engineering safety protocols, Cadet. Let me hold the knife for you before you injure yourself.”

“Oh, don’t wowwy, shir, it’sh fine, I know what I’m doing,” she said through her teeth so the scalpel wouldn’t fall out of her mouth, still sounding bubbly and cheerful as usual. The next second, she shrieked and jumped back from the panel, probably because of an electric shock, pulling her hand out and—of course—dropping the knife.

Paul reacted completely out of reflex and his hand shot forward as he tried to catch the scalpel.

“OUCH!”

Tilly’s eyes widened in horror and her face went pale. Paul’s stomach lurched as he saw a fine trail of bright red blood dripping from the small cut on her cheek, but his attention immediately got drawn back to the pain in his right hand. He barely dared to look at it.

“Oh my— _sir_! Oh my gosh! Why did you—oh no, oh no, oh gosh—this—this looks terrible! Are—are you—oh gosh, I mean—of _course_ you’re _not_ okay right now, you’ve got a—oh my gosh …”

Her panicked stream of words only added to the surreal feeling of the entire situation. Paul noticed how much his body was shaking, most of all his left hand, fingers wrapped around his right wrist. He tried to brace himself and take a look—

Yeah. Sure enough, the scalpel’s blade had cleanly cut its way deep into his right palm, nearly all the way through, and was now stuck firmly within his … thenar something … muscles? Was that he word Hugh had used? Paul vaguely remembered them coming up in a conversation once. He was immediately feeling violently sick; pressed his lips tightly together and pulled his eyes away, trying to ignore the pain that was actualizing now. He also started feeling more than just a little dizzy.

Tilly quickly jumped up.

“We have to get you to sickbay, sir! Are you—do you think you can go by yourself …?”

He tried to get up from the floor, but felt his body swaying dangerously at once. Tilly timidly helped him up, hands on his shoulder and arm, and he managed to stand up, for better or worse, but feeling shakier than ever.

“Uh, no, probably not.” She laughed nervously. “I’ll take you there, sir, don’t worry, together we can do this!”

Paul knew better than to argue with her, so he complied. He was already feeling almost ready to pass out.

 

***

 

He had no idea how she managed to get him to sickbay. Every time he so much as looked in the general direction of the knife stuck in his hand, he wanted to throw up and his knees almost gave way. Tilly kept talking the whole way through, and he was grateful for her attempts to distract him. The hand hadn’t started bleeding much yet, at least, but its sight did nothing to help Paul’s stomach.

Once they’d stepped inside, Tilly craned her neck to find the nearest available doctor, one hand still on Paul’s upper arm to steady him because he was swaying dangerously at this point. His eyes sought Hugh out immediately, who seemed to be discharging a patient and making final notes in their files, and he instinctively started moving in that direction. He struggled not to stumble on his way over, Tilly coming along with him.

“Hugh …” he slurred, his voice barely audible. The edges of his vision were getting really blurry by now.

Hugh turned around and his eyes widened in surprise as he recognized his visitor.

“Lieutenant Stamets! What brings you h—Paul?!”

Paul made a weak attempt at a smile, but judging by the expression forming on Hugh’s face he probably looked like he was dying. Which he might be, actually, because the room started swaying dangerously around him. Hugh quickly put an arm around his shoulders to gently release him from Tilly’s care, and took his still-impaled hand into his own. The sudden gesture drew Paul’s attention back to it, and under the bright light of sickbay he got what was probably his first proper look at his injured hand.

The scalpel had just shifted it seemed, and a little gush of blood was now coming out around the blade. The sight of the wet, bright red standing out starkly against his pale skin began to sink in and then everything went kind of dark.

 

***

 

When he opened his eyes he found himself lying down on his back, on something that was less comfortable than his bed but also more comfortable than the floor. After blinking a few times he recognized the ceiling of sickbay above him. He tried to push himself up into a sitting position on the biobed, but his right hand felt a little awkward and uncomfortable. Bracing himself for the worst, he risked a glance at it. It appeared completely healed.

A quiet, warm chuckle came from somewhere to his left.

“Easy there, sleeping beauty.”

“Hugh? What happened …?”

“You fainted … straight into my arms.” He sat down beside Paul’s bed, took his right hand in both of his. “You know, if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.” He shook his head. “Sticking knives into your hand just to have an excuse to see me.”

Paul opened his mouth to protest, but then saw the glee in Hugh’s eyes.

“Don’t make fun of me,” he said at last, looking down and with flushed cheeks. “It was an accident.”

“Yeah, Tilly told me about it. Good thinking, by the way, not to remove it. Would have bled a lot more otherwise.”

Paul’s eyes shot up in a rush of panic.

“It wasn’t her fault! Don’t write that into your report! I don’t want her to get in trouble for not following safety protocol. Hugh, please!”

He smiled brightly.

“Don’t worry about her, I’ll make sure to be careful with my wording. I did have a stern talking to her, though, and she had to promise me to be more careful in the future. The cut on her face has been taken care of as well, by the way.”

Paul released the breath he had been holding.

“Good …”

“She went back to engineering to finish up fixing that wiring. Under the supervision and care of a responsible superior officer.”

“Don’t look at me like that. I thought I was being very responsible.”

“You know that’s bullshit.”

“Hey,” Paul said, unable to hold back his grin, “language, doctor.”

“‘Shit’ is okay under appropriate circumstances. Will _you_ also promise me to be more careful from now on?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hugh sighed, but a bit of the smile was still there.

“Did I really faint in the middle of sickbay?” Paul asked nervously.

“As a matter of fact, you did. I knew you can’t see blood and you were injured, but … was it really that bad?”

“Umm…” Paul glanced at his face, then quickly looked away. “Kind of …”

Hugh’s brows furrowed.

“Speak,” he commanded.

Paul cleared his throat, but he knew Hugh wasn’t going to be pleased with his answer.

“Don’t tell me you skipped your meals today.”

“… Maybe.”

“I hope this isn’t about me canceling our lunch date.”

“No, it’s …” He took a deep breath. “Maybe? Kind of? But Lorca also just dumped more work on me, and the idea of eating lunch alone without you didn’t seem all that appealing, and then time kind of … just passed on like that, you know?” He looked back up apologetically into Hugh’s scolding face.

“All of them?”

“Well …”

He let go of Paul’s hand to cross his arms in front of his chest and Paul immediately missed the contact. After an exasperated sigh, Hugh said, “Well, Lieutenant Stamets, lucky for you, your doctor has deemed you unfit to go back to work today and insists that you take the day off tomorrow as well, so you’ve got time for dinner now.”

“Lorca’s not going to like that,” Paul started. “He wants to do another test tomorrow morning, so …”

“He’ll have to wait another day, then,” Hugh interrupted him, “because I managed to convince the CMO that I’ll be needing the rest of the day to personally make sure that my patient will be okay, and to give me the day off tomorrow as well, so I’m not letting you out of my sight for the next thirty-eight hours. So—dinner, yes or yes?”

Paul jumped up from the bed as quickly as he could.

“Definitely yes!”


End file.
